The Ecosystem Is Still Alive

by Rebecca Thomas

It's fair to say that today I felt slightly insane.

"Insane" was how I replied to my cleaner when she asked how my day had been.

Admittedly, I was coaching and mentoring a beginning teacher in the moment whilst they observed my reading lesson, whilst simultaneously having a trainee teacher observing me at the same time.

Amongst all of this, my students were trying to cope with their teacher having side conversations about best practice with two humans at completely different stages of their careers. They were also trying to showcase previous learning, explain how they learn best and generally be excited that visitors were in the room.

It was educational multitasking at its finest.

Or perhaps its most ridiculous.

As I stood there attempting to teach, mentor, model, answer questions and keep thirteen moving parts heading vaguely in the same direction, I found myself looking around the room and thinking something that has been following me all evening.

Despite everything that is happening politically, there is still so much hope in our education ecosystem.

The last three years have been many things; exhausting, frustrating, disheartening and alike. For those standing up for what they believe is right, it has often felt like a constant battle.

I just want you all to know that after three years of fighting for children, justice, equity and common sense — and losing far more battles than we have won — there are still classrooms like this.

My classroom isn't arranged in rows. I know PLD has told you from Australia that best practice is best, but we sit at circular tables on different-height chairs and stools.

We have a ridiculously soft sensory rug under the TV that children can't walk past without touching. It has the same effect as a beanbag for those children who need sensory pressure and regulation. Quite often they lie on it whilst working. Admittedly, I do too.

Around the television are RGB LED lights they chose themselves after collectively saving their Dojo points. Underneath sits a guava and blackberry incense pot, which they also chose.

To an outsider, it probably looks slightly odd.

One parent even exclaimed that my classroom looked far too comfy.

Ironically, four weeks ago it was a bare storage room without a whiteboard, TV or furniture. No soul. No life. No laughter. Today it smells faintly of guava and blackberry. Children argue over LED colours. Somebody is usually lying upside down on the rug reading a book. To us, it feels like home.

This classroom is built around agency and choice. Cooperation and collaboration.

I don't drill and kill spellings with whiteboards glued to children's chins. I don't overcomplicate language conventions with terminology that would make most adults reach for Panadol.

Brackets are brackets.

Ellipses are three dots.

Apostrophes are floating commas.

The children help decide what texts they are reading. They recommend books to each other. They identify areas they want to improve. They contribute to where learning goes next.

When learning gets overwhelming, we pause.

When transitions are needed, we transition.

If a lesson needs parking to preserve the love and passion of what is currently unfolding, we park it. Sometimes we even have a group vote about what gets parked and why.

When somebody needs a moment, we try to provide one.

Does it always work?

Absolutely not.

Some days are beautiful.

Some days are feral.

Some days a carefully crafted lesson plan lasts approximately four minutes before reality barges through the door and reminds everyone who is really in charge.

Yet somehow, despite all of that, this class has become the highest-attending class in the school. That still amazes me!

You know how teachers sometimes joke that if just three particular students happened to stay home one day life might be a little smoother? Every staffroom in New Zealand has probably had that conversation at some point. The funny thing is, my class is the class the staff joke about. Everyone knows they are probably the most challenging class in the school.

They are loud, complex, emotional, energetic, wonderfully unpredictable and capable of creating absolute chaos before 9am. They keep us all on our toes. Yet they come every single day. Attendance barely wavers.

When somebody is absent through sickness or tangi, they return genuinely shocked by how much learning happened while they were gone.

"Whaea, you guys have done heaps."

For all the conversations happening nationally about attendance, engagement and achievement, I often find myself wondering whether we overlook something very simple. Children keep returning to places where they feel they belong.

We have a workflow spreadsheet accessible to everyone. We conference quietly. We check progress. We adapt. We meet needs. This week I forgot to reset the template for our Learning Logs. I hadn't even asked the students to complete them. I had forgotten entirely. Yet they reminded me. Not because there was a reward attached. Not because they were worried about getting told off but because reflecting on learning has become normal. It belongs to them now. And this is where I found hope.

As I talked through all of this with the two teachers sitting in my room, they were mesmerised. Not because I am some educational guru. Far from it. I am, but surviving and responding like so may of us. I was probably still carrying glue on one sleeve and whiteboard marker on the other. But they could feel it.

They could see the engagement.

They could see relationships.

They could see students who felt safe enough to contribute, challenge, question and participate.

One of them changed their entire practicum goal. They had arrived focused on planning and documentation and trying to navigate the strange space between university expectations, old curriculum expectations and new curriculum expectations. By the end, they wanted to focus on responsiveness. On adapting to learners carrying trauma. On understanding human beings before programmes.

The other left wanting to try a reading lesson that looked more like a conversation and less like a compliance exercise.

Both left talking about relationships.

And that made me realise something. I know many leaders are feeling railroaded right now.I know that the reform is relentless and soul-destroying for anyone with passion and heart. I know some of you are quietly wondering whether you are compromising too much, complying too much, giving up too much of what you know to be true. Trying to hold on to what you remember our education system became great at.

Sometimes it feels like every week somebody else has decided they have finally discovered the one true way to teach children and removed something that protected it from being abused, corrupted, whitewashed or made racist. As if education has somehow been waiting thousands of years for a consultant, policy adviser or politician to finally crack "The Code" or discover "the science". Yet what I witnessed today reminded me that real teaching remains wonderfully difficult to control.

Thankfully.

And that is both its strength and its armour. Teaching has always been an ecosystem.

We know that policies come and go. Thankfully governments come and go. Curriculums are rewritten expensively, sadly. Assessment tools are replaced, renamed and rephrased.

Power shifts eventually. Language changes always. Yet somehow the essential act of teaching remains remarkably stubborn. More of a stain, really. It still lives in relationships and trust. It still lives in the conversations teachers have with children every single day.

Don't fret.

Te Tiriti still lives if it lives within us. Pedagogical imagination is still alive if we continue modelling it. The curriculum whitewashing is hard on the eyes and ears; stark and white like starch. I empathise.

The political blows are very real and the pressure leaders are carrying is very real. But I left school today (admittedly ‘insane’) having watched two future teachers become excited about responsive practice, relationships and learner agency.

Nobody mandated that.

No policy document instructed it.

No PLD provider sold it.

They saw it.

They felt it.

They damn right experienced it.

One arrived wanting to learn how to align plans and programmes, but they left talking about belonging. The other arrived wanting to understand reading practice, but they left talking about relationships.

That happened because they witnessed something governments can never quite legislate. Human connection. Teachers do that. Leaders create the conditions for that. And perhaps that is what gives me hope.

Because while the noise can sometimes feel overwhelming, there are still experienced kaiako quietly passing on the art of teaching to the next generation.Through modelling what it means to genuinely know, care for and respond to children.

The ecosystem is still alive.

It is still growing.

And despite everything, it is still producing remarkable teachers.

Long after ministers move portfolios, governments lose elections and policy documents gather dust on shelves, those teachers will still be changing lives.

And if today taught me anything, it is that the next generation of teachers is still finding those people and learning from them.

That feels worth remembering tonight.